David J Cook

David J. Cook 1840-1907, American law enforcement officer, b. near La Porte, Ind. He moved (1855) with his family to Kansas, went (1859) to the Colorado gold fields, and returned to enlist (1861) in the Union army in the Civil War. Army service as a sort of military policeman led him to found the volunteer Rocky Mountain Detective Association to suppress outlawry in Colorado, and he had a long career as marshal, sheriff, and police chief, mostly around Denver. He brought many train, bank, and express-company robbers to justice, helped to quell the Ute revolt of 1878, and was arbitrator in the mine strike at Leadville in 1880.

Bibliography: See his reminiscences (new ed. 1958).

Cook, David, (1940– ), novelist, actor, and television playwright, born in Preston. He began his career as an actor after training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. His first novel, Albert's Memorial (1972), about the tragi-comic friendship between widowed Mary and homosexual Paul, was followed by Happy Endings (1974), about the relationship between a 12-year-old boy and a schoolteacher. Walter (1978) is the story of a sensitive young man with severe learning difficulties; a TV adaptation with Ian McKellen was chosen to launch Channel Four in 1982. Winter Doves (1979) is a sequel. Other works include Sunrising (1984), a historical novel set in the 1830s, Missing Persons (1986), Crying out Loud (1988), and Second Best (1991), about a single man's attempt to adopt a 10-year-old boy. Cook's work displays a deep and humane sympathy with the disadvantaged and the sexually marginalized.

Cook, James (1728–79), celebrated circumnavigator, left records of his three principal voyages in An Account of a Voyage round the World 1768–71 (1773), compiled by J. Hawkesworth from the journals of Cook and his botanist Banks; A Voyage towards the South Pole… 1772–3 (1777); A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean… 1776–1780 (1784, the third vol. by Capt. T. King). Passages from Cook's second volume provided sources for the story and imagery of Coleridge's ‘Ancient Mariner’ (see J. L. Lowes, The Road to Xanadu, 1927). Cook was murdered by natives in Hawaii.